An automatic neighbor relation (ANR) is one of features of a self organizing network (SON) that draws the greatest concern from the industry. Because of complexity of network development and emergence of a network featuring multiple standards, multiple levels, and multiple station types, a quantity of neighbor relations and switching types are dramatically increasing. As a result, it is very difficult to manage and maintain a neighboring cell; therefore, operators are pinning wishes on the ANR function, hoping that neighboring cell management and optimization are automatically completed by using a system.
However, at present, the neighbor relation is optimized mainly in an offline and semi-automatic optimization manner: First, data is exported from a network element such as a radio network controller (RNC) by means of manual intervention; then, the data is imported into a network planning and optimization tool for analyzing the neighbor relation; and finally, the network planning and optimization tool provides a result of analyzing the neighbor relation, and a neighboring cell configuration is manually modified according to the result of analyzing the neighbor relation. Therefore, a problem exists in this manner that a neighbor relation cannot be automatically optimized because a data source cannot be automatically acquired, but data needs to be manually imported into the network planning and optimization tool.